I’m pretty sure a major frustration of the typical worker in this otherwise growing economy is the inexplicable lack of pay hikes. Pay has stagnated for many workers because bosses think they don’t have to raise wages. Two recent studies show getting raises that beat inflation is rare – though not impossible.

The California Budget & Policy Center, a Sacramento think tank, studied state salary trends during the economic dip compared with the recovery period. The center found a significant loss of buying power in the middle of the pay spectrum – a blow to the state’s middle class.

The center’s study grouped average annual wages into nine slices using a quirky statistical tool known as the “percentile.” You know one version as the “median” – the 50th percentile, or the midpoint of an entire grouping.

The study looked at nine income groupings – the lowest-paid being workers in the 10th percentile, the highest paid those in the 90th percentile – to get a sense of how recent economic turbulence impacted people at various rungs on the pay ladder.

From 2006 through 2011 – that is, from the economic peak into the early days of the recovery – the median hourly wage, after inflation, fell by 4.5 percent. But medians don’t tell the entire story.

The center’s study showed how deep the recessionary hit was: eight of the nine percentiles tracked saw wages drop. Only the 90th percentile – yes, the top rung in this study – had an after-inflation wage gain during the 2006-11 period.

Things improved in the recovery. Somewhat.

The center found that during the rebound – from 2011 through 2014 – the median inflation-adjusted hourly wage dipped 0.6 percent.

A percentile-by-percentile data analysis shows the pay pain during the overall economic recovery has been in the middle-income range.

In the three midrange percentiles studied – the 40th, 50th and 60th – after-inflation wages fell. Five other percentiles tracked had wage gains. Wages in the lowest-paid percentile were flat. Again, the highest-paid percentile had the biggest gain, at 2 percent.

Luke Reidenbach, author of the center’s report, noted that paychecks have failed to keep up with inflation for decades – an acute challenge in high-cost California.

The decline of unionization and its collective bargaining hit salaries in many industries that once provided middle-income wages. National monetary policy focused more on keeping inflation at bay than encouraging employment. Plus, California’s middle class is further challenged by job growth concentrated at both ends of the pay spectrum.

“It’s hard to be that guy,” Reidenbach concedes about being the one to find fault with an otherwise noteworthy California hiring spree. “For lots of folks, it’s going pretty well. We are really in a very strong expansion that’s helped a lot of people. But there’s also this huge center that’s doing OK, but not well.”

Similar wage stagnation was found in a national study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. It showed that average annual wages adjusted for inflation rose in only eight of 22 key U.S. employment categories from 2004 through 2014.

Jobs with pay hikes that beat inflation in the past decade were largely in higher-end professions with wages above the national average: health care, architecture/engineering, management, finance, computing, arts/design/entertainment and law, the Cleveland Fed study found. Protective services was the only sector with below-average pay in which wages rose over the past decade.

Cleveland Fed economists blamed a variety of factors: from technological innovation cutting the need for labor, to globalization moving production offshore, to declining productivity of American workers (at least as it is tabulated). And, yes, the loss of collective bargaining power.

What’s scary to me is that this meek wage growth comes as employers in California and across the U.S. hire at a pace not seen in a decade or more. Bosses seem more willing to invest in new workers, technology and foreign plants than to increase the pay scale.

Reidenbach agrees with my assertion that many employees seeking a raise may need to consider switching jobs. Sadly, that’s not practical for every worker, nor is it an efficient use of personnel for the employer.

But maybe the pressure of losing workers and replacing or adding staff will draw wages higher.

“You would have thought that would have happened by now,” Reidenbach said.

If you want to sweeten your paycheck, you may have to dust off your resume.

Jonathan Lansner has been the Orange County Register's business columnist since 1997 and has been part of the newspaper's coverage of the local business scene since 1986. He is a native New Yorker who is a past national president of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Jon lives in Trabuco Canyon -- yes, a homeowner -- and when he's not fiddling with his trusty spreadsheet at work you can likely find him rooting for his beloved Anaheim Ducks or umpiring local lacrosse games.

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